Fenty flunks basic math or "how I can't read a chart"

Now, I understand why Mayor Fenty has to come out in defense of the District's handgun ban, being it District law and all. But basically stretching the truth (i.e. pretty much lying) about the effect of the ban? Not so good.

[Click here for a video of the Mayor's post hearing press conference]


The Mayor claims that the handgun ban has "significantly curtailed the number of violent crimes in the city."

This is complete bunk. Below are three graphs of data taken from DisasterCenter.com. Its lists the number of crimes in various categories for each year from 1960 to 2006, along with the District's population at the time. I have focused on three categories: violent crime, murder and assault.






click image for larger picture

In each graph the bars represent the rate of crimes of each category per 100,000 residence. The bar representing 1976 -- the year the gun ban was enacted -- is colored red. There are also three lines on each graph. The red line represents the 1976 rate, the yellow line represents the average rate for that crime between 1960 and 1976, and the green line represents the average rate for that crime post 1977. As you can see, for each of these categories the crime rate has actually increased. In fact, if you go back to the source data and look at all of the data every category except rape and burglary have shot up significantly since the gun ban (the average for rape and burglary pre and post gun ban are virtually identical).

I like Mayor Fenty; I think he has been (so far) overall a positive for the District. Outright lying to make try to justify a crappy law, however, is just bad.